Crossroads in Time (2/3) by Avalon

See Headers in Part One

"Dana?  Have you got a minute?"

She looked up to see Sallie Roget's head peering around 
the door of her office.  She and Sallie had worked together 
now for almost four years.  She had been a good friend to 
her when Brian passed away, and Dana appreciated her 
keen sense of humor.  Plus, Sallie was an excellent doctor, 
and the two women had often discussed problem cases over 
lattes at lunchtime.

She removed her glasses and smiled.  "Sure, Sal.  Come on 
in."

The taller woman moved into the room, sliding her own 
spectacles into the breast pocket of her white coat.  "I was 
wondering if you could take a look at this unusual patient 
that has come in.  We aren't really sure what to make of 
him, and I know in the past you have worked on some 
really strange cases."

Dana chuffed out a friendly breath.  "Yeah, that's me.  
Weird Ones-R-Us."  She held out her hand.  "What have 
you got?"

She flipped open the chart as Sallie began talking.  
"Caucasian male, early fifties, ordinary in every sense of 
the word.  He was found naked in the middle of a field 
about ten miles from here three months ago."

She squinted at the words on the page as she fumbled for 
her glasses again.  "Three months?  And he's just now 
coming into the hospital?  Where's he been up until now?"

"In the ground, pushing up daisies."  She looked up, 
startled, but Sallie's face was stony.  This was certainly not 
a case of her famous sense of humor.  "By all outward 
appearances, he was dead.  But someone dug him up last 
night and brought him in here."

"You're saying this man is alive?  That he's been alive in 
his coffin for three months?"

Sallie nodded.  "It would appear that way, yes."

She glanced back down at the chart.  "Who brought him 
in?"

"We don't know.  It's a real mystery.  It's like he appeared 
out of thin air."

An icy finger skated down her spine, and she shivered.  
// Hold onto your hat, Scully, cause you're gonna love this. //  
She pushed Mulder's gleeful voice from her mind and 
stood up, ignoring the hateful way her knee joints protested 
the sudden movement.  She despised getting old.  "Where 
is he?"

"In the I.C.U.  He's on every machine imaginable, but he 
seems to be holding his own."

The women walked quickly through the halls, and she 
dodged bodies as she went, scanning the pages of the chart.  
They paused outside the Intensive Care Unit door.  "This 
man hasn't been identified?"

Sallie shrugged.  "They haven't given us his name.  The 
admitting nurse is still on the phone with the cemetery.  
They are trying to piece together exactly what happened."

She grunted in response and pushed open the door.  The 
room was lined with hospital beds, many sectioned off 
from their neighbors by circling curtains of drab blue.  
Sallie waved her hand at the first partition on her right.  

"Here he is."

She glanced up from the chart she still held in her hands as 
Sallie swept the curtain aside.  She heard the familiar sound 
of the hooks traveling over the track in the ceiling, a 
metallic chime that reminded her of keys and change being 
jostled in a pocket.  Her mind grabbed onto that for some 
reason.

// Mulder used to do that.  Jingle his change that way. //

The tiny smile of remembrance the thought brought to her 
face froze as her eyes locked onto the patient in the bed.   
The clipboard clattered to the floor, ringing out a startled 
sound similar to the one that escaped from her throat.

Her knees buckled, but she didn't fall.  She stumbled 
instead into the foot of the bed, her hand brushing the 
man's feet beneath the sheet.  The touch sent a jolt so 
strong through her that it made her think of sticking her 
finger in the outlet of her navy-base housing when she was 
a tiny girl.  She felt dizzy and stupid, as if waking up from 
a thick, black nightmare and greeting the full light of day.

She was vaguely aware of Sallie's voice, asking if she was 
all right, if she was feeling faint, but she ignored her.  She 
pawed her way up the side of the mattress toward the man's 
head, flinging her glasses aside to assure herself it wasn't 
just a trick of her aging eyes.  He was a mess of scars, and a 
penetrating pallor whitened his skin, but the face, although 
tinged with the signs of age, remained the same.  She 
couldn't deny what she saw.

Sallie Roget watched, stunned, as Dana O'Meara slowly 
lowered her head to the chest of the patient in the bed.  
When her cheek turned and settled against the man's 
hospital gown, Sallie could see trails of wetness glistening 
on her friend's face.  Although she didn't understand what 
the word meant, she heard Dana whisper it, like a prayer 
uttered from the lips of the dying:

"Mulder."  His name hung in the air like the pendulum of a 
stopped clock.

*****

She leaned further into the shower spray, her hands splayed 
in front of her on the tile wall to prop her up, allowing the 
water to beat into the aching muscles of her neck.  She had 
been up for over twenty-five hours, and she wasn't 
planning to sleep anytime soon.

She would stay with him until he awoke.  Nothing would 
deter her.

The cemetery had finally verified that the man in the bed 
was indeed Fox William Mulder, born October 13, 1961, 
died May 10, 2010, buried May 14 of the same year.  This 
year.  The coroner's report had listed Mulder's death as 
unexplained, the only word she could summon to describe 
his current condition.  He was somehow alive, but in every 
other sense of the word, his body was dead.

Just like Mulder to become an X-File himself.

But her logical mind rejoiced at having a puzzle to solve, 
just as her straining heart reveled in his reappearance in her 
life.  Perhaps finally, she would be able to tell him she was 
sorry.  That she had never meant to leave him the way she 
did, that she still thought of him often, that she missed his 
presence and his friendship and even the strangeness that 
he had brought to her.  

Yes, perhaps she could even tell him now that she loved 
him.  

She had finally realized it.  The thought had come to her 
one day soon after Brian died, a morning not unlike the 
ones that had passed before it.  She had been rearranging 
the kitchen cabinets, stacking dinner plates from her old set 
of Pfaltzcraft that she had decided to donate to the church 
rummage sale.  She traced the tip of one fingernail around 
the edging of blue wisps, and his voice had rocketed 
through her mind as it was wont to do on occasion, 
bringing with it a blinding and shocking result:

"Should we be picking out china patterns or what, Scully?"

She had managed to cling to the plate as it started to slip 
from her hand, saving it from shattering on the floor…but 
she had burst into tears.  
 
She had loved him.  She still did.  Her marriage to Brian 
had been good and solid, like an old oak door...but her love 
had remained with a man she hadn't seen in twelve years.  
The man who had changed her life in so many ways, both 
good and bad.  The man who would forever be branded into 
her heart, a sensation that both stung and soothed her.

And now he was here with her again.  She had been given a 
second chance, and she wasn't about to waste it.

First things first, though.  Make him well.  Then, she would 
go one step at a time.

She dried quickly and hurried into her clothes, stuffing her 
drooping outfit from the day before into her hospital locker.  
She pulled her damp hair into a short ponytail, touched up 
her face, and then headed down to I.C.U.  Her lab coat 
flapped about her as she opened the unit door and abruptly 
settled into stillness as she paused, astonished, ten feet from 
his bed.

A young woman sat in the chair she had occupied.  Her 
shoulder-length hair gleamed like burnished walnut, and 
her arm stretched across the thin blanket to clasp Mulder's 
hand.  She turned reddened eyes to her, her mouth a thin 
line of worry.  She barely looked old enough to drive a car.  

The words tumbled out of her, even though she didn't 
really understand why she felt she should apologize.  "I'm 
sorry.  I didn't mean to intrude--"

The young woman stood up, dragging Mulder's hand with 
her.  She clutched it to her like a child with a favorite doll.  
"Are you his doctor?  Can you please tell me what 
happened to him?"

"I'm Dana Sc--" She checked herself, surprise surfacing in 
her mind.  Why had she started to introduce herself that 
way?  She hadn't been Dana Scully in years.  "I'm Doctor 
Dana O'Meara.  I was asked by a colleague to consult on 
this man's case.  And you are?"

"I'm his daughter."  

The words chased themselves around in her head.  
"His...daughter?" she finally repeated, hoping she didn't 
sound as stunned as she felt.  

"Yes.  I had to fly in from Washington, or I would have 
been here sooner."  The young woman squeezed his hand 
tighter, and she squelched the urge to reprimand her.  "Can 
you please tell me what happened?  I can't quite believe 
I'm here...that he's actually alive..."  She looked at her 
imploringly, a tear trickling down her smooth cheek.

Her professional decorum took over, driving away the 
emotional lurch in her stomach.  "We're not sure what 
happened.  We understand that he was presumed dead and 
buried, but he somehow turned up here at the hospital 
yesterday morning.  Quite a bit of his medical history from 
the last year is incomplete.  Can you give me any 
information?  What happened to him before he was 
interred?"

The girl sank back down into her chair.  "He was missing 
for almost eight months.  When they finally found him, 
they told me...they told me he was dead!"  She was crying 
hard now, and Dana laid her hand on the girl's shoulder, 
hoping to deliver some comfort.  

"How did he end up missing?  Can you tell me anything 
about that?"

Her young voice choked through her tears, but she sounded 
quite sure of herself.  "We believe he was abducted."

The word sounded strange to her now, a word that Mulder 
himself had used so often in their work together, a word 
that sent a tremor through her entire body.  Her own tone 
was soft and steady when she asked, "You mean, by 
extraterrestrials?"

The girl nodded, her wet face set in a look of defiance.  "I 
know it is hard to believe--"

"No, no."  She waved her hand in dismissal.  "I 
understand."

Her gaze drifted over to Mulder.  His chest rose and fell in 
the rhythm of the respirator, and the heart monitor blipped 
his readout in ridges across the screen.  The tiny holes on 
his cheeks and the ones she had examined in his wrists and 
ankles told a story of captivity, and the ugly scar that split 
his torso in two spoke of torture and tests.  She closed her 
eyes against the frightening scene that played in her mind, a 
scene that seemed to be a mirror to her own hazy 
experience of lost time and painful sensations.

The girl's voice broke into her thoughts.  "You know him."

She opened her eyes and blinked at her.  The girl stared at 
her for a moment, the blue of her gaze as penetrating as any 
look Mulder had ever trained on her.  "You know him, 
don't you?"  She stood up, dropping Mulder's hand back to 
the bed in her excitement.  "You said your name was Dana.  
Are you Dana Scully?"  She grabbed Dana's arm, her nails 
biting through the thin fabric of her jacket.  "You were his 
partner at the F.B.I!"

She couldn't help nodding at her enthusiasm.  "Yes, I--"

She cut her off.  "I can't believe it!  You have no 
idea...he'll be so thrilled!  He talks about you all the time.  
Scully this and Scully that.  I've heard about nothing but 
Scully since I was a little girl!"  The young woman took a 
deep breath and beamed.  "I just can't believe you're here."

A feeling as thick and sweet as warm honey seeped into her 
chest.  She smiled back.  "I'm having a hard time believing 
it myself."  She brushed her fingers over the back of 
Mulder's hand, a brief movement that she just couldn't 
help.  "It's been a long, long time since I've seen him."

"I know."  The young woman threw him an adoring gaze, 
and Dana swallowed hard.  This girl was his daughter.  
Some woman's child, and he was her father.  She and 
Mulder hadn't been partners, hadn't been friends, for a very 
long time.  It made the feelings of love she had 
contemplated just fifteen minutes before seem like teasing, 
cruel children, and she quieted them expertly, relegating 
them to a dark corner of her brain.  But she felt compelled 
to know the truth.

"May I ask you a personal question?"  The girl nodded, and 
she pressed forward before she lost her nerve.  "Do I know 
your mother?"

"I never knew my mother."  The brows above her eyes 
knitted together.  "I don't remember her at all.  I don't 
remember much of anything before he found me."

"Found you?"

"Yes.  He found me in New Mexico.  I was six years old.  
He couldn't find any record of my birth mother or father, so 
he adopted me."

An absurd wave of relief swept through her.  Mulder had 
adopted a child.  She wasn't Diana Fowley's daughter, as 
she had suspected...as she had feared.  "So you're sixteen 
now?"

"I'll be seventeen in November."  She took Mulder's hand 
once more.  "Now he can really teach me to drive.  He 
promised last year, before he disappeared."  She pressed a 
kiss to his knuckles, and Dana felt tears spring to her eyes.  
"He is going to get better, isn't he?"

"We're doing everything we can.  And he's always been 
strong."

"Thank you, Scully.  I know he's in good hands."  The girl 
smiled again.  "Is it all right if I call you Scully?  I don't 
know if I could call you anything else."

She took a deep breath and allowed her smile to shine, the 
one that she reserved for special people in her life.  Mulder 
would have recognized it had he been awake, having seen it 
on rare occasions himself.  "I haven't been called Scully in 
a very long time.  But I like hearing it again."  She turned 
to go to the door, wanting to give the young woman some 
time alone with Mulder, but she paused with her hand on 
the knob.  "You haven't told me your name."

The girl settled back into the chair.  "It's Emily.  It's funny, 
my name is one of the only things I remember from before 
Dad found me."

No words would come out of her throat.  They seemed to 
burn there as she fought for control, as her mind rolled over 
and over like a snowball barreling downhill.  She finally 
gave Emily a short nod and pushed her way out of the 
room, heading quickly for the bathroom at the end of the 
hall.

She threw up.  Becoming a mother often did that to people, 
even if it happened nearly seventeen years after the fact.

***End Part Two***